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061c018
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All the barriers were gone. I had unwound the string she had given me, and found my way out of the labyrinth to where she was waiting. I loved her with more than my body.
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flowers-for-algernon
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Daniel Keyes |
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5e27010
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I may not have all the time I thought I had...
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flowers-for-algernon
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Daniel Keyes |
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93953c2
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By shutting out the real world we can live peacefully in ours. We know that a world without pain is a world without feeling... But a world without feeling is a world without pain.
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pain
imagination
real-world
peace
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Daniel Keyes |
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5617d4a
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language is sometimes a barrier instead of a pathway.
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Daniel Keyes |
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7f02f11
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Alice knows everything about me, and accepts the fact that we can be together for only a short while. She has agreed to go away when I tell her to go. It's painful to think about that, but what we have, I suspect, is more than most people find in a lifetime.
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Daniel Keyes |
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403e682
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The more intelligent you become the more problems you'll have, Charlie.
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Daniel Keyes |
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34a4e0c
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I was her bestist pupil in the Beckman School for retarted adults and I tryed the hardist becus I reely wantd to lern I wantid it more even then pepul who are smarter even then me.
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Daniel Keyes |
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04d9a68
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When he admitted this to me, I found myself almost annoyed. It was as if he'd hidden this part of himself in order to deceive me, pretending-- as do many people I've discovered--to be what he is not. No one I've ever known is what he appears to be on the surface.
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Daniel Keyes |
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2e00efb
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I can't help but admire the structural linguists who have carved out for themselves a linguistic discipline based on the deterioration of written communication. Another case of men devoting their lives to studying more and more about less and less-filling volumes and libraries with the subtle linguistic analysis of the grunt.
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Daniel Keyes |
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bc39e8c
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That's the most important thing. If I keep reading, maybe I can hold my own.
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Daniel Keyes |
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7a1a07d
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The last time we were here," I said, "I told you I liked you. I should have trusted myself to say I love you."
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Daniel Keyes |
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48a39bd
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How strange it is that people of honest feelings and sensibility, who would not take advantage of a man born without arms or legs or eyes--how such people think nothing of abusing a man born with low intelligence.
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Daniel Keyes |
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9e706e5
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People resent being shown that they don't approach the complexities of the problem - they don't know what exists beyond the surface ripples.
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Daniel Keyes |
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7d39b49
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One of the things that confuses me is never really knowing when something comes up from my past, whether it really happened that way, or if that was the way it seemed to be at the time, or if I'm inventing it. I'm like a man who's been half-asleep all his life, trying to find out what he was like before he woke up.
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Daniel Keyes |
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2a5ba46
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Light and unfeeling. Drifting and expanding through time and space. And then, as I know I am about to pierce the crust of existence, like a flying fish leaping out of the sea, I feel the pull from below.
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Daniel Keyes |
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438ee7b
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You want these back, don't you? You want me out of here so you can come back and take over where you left off. I don't blame you. It's your body and your brain-and your life, even though you weren't able to make much use of it. I don't have the right to take it away from you. Nobody does. Who's to say that my light is better than your darkness? Who's to say death is better than your darkness? Who am I to say?...
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flowers-for-algernon
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Daniel Keyes |
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3207f95
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No, you don't understand because it isn't happening to you, and no one can understand but me. I don't blame you. You've got your job to do, and your Ph.D. to get, and-oh, yes don't tell me, I know you're in this largely out of love of humanity, but you've got your life to live and we don't happen to belong on the same level. I passed your floor on the way up, nad now I'm passing it on the way down, and I don't think I'll be taking this elev..
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flowers-for-algernon
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Daniel Keyes |
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6075c1b
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What has happened to me? Why am I so alone in the world?
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Daniel Keyes |
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b2c8389
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Here look at me. I'm Charlie, the son you wrote off the books? Not that I blame you for it, but here I am, all fixed up better than ever. Test me. Ask me questions. I speak twenty languages, living and dead; I'm a mathematical whiz, and I'm writing a piano concerto that will make them remember me long after I'm gone.
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flowers-for-algernon
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Daniel Keyes |
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0ae2b56
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Downhill. Thoughts of suicide to stop it all now while I am still in control and aware of the world around me. But then I think of Charlie waiting at the window. His life is not mine to throw away. I've just burrowed it for a while, and now I'm being asked to return it.
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flowers-for-algernon
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Daniel Keyes |
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53a8038
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Whatever happens to me, I will have lived a thousand normal lives by what I might add to others not yet born.
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Daniel Keyes |
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de92341
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But the deeper I get tangled up in this mass of dreams and memories the more I realize that emotional problems can't be solved as intellectual problems are.
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Daniel Keyes |
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84cb136
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The feeling of cold grayness was everywhere around me-a sense of resignation. There had been no talk of rehabilitation, of cure, of someday sending these people out into the world again. No one had spoken of hope. The feeling was of living death-or worse, of never having been fully alive and knowing. Souls withered from the beginning, and doomed to stare into the time and space of every day.
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flowers-for-algernon
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Daniel Keyes |
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a9cbe39
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What an incredible thing! How much less they had than other human beings. Mentally retarded, deaf, mute - and still eagerly sanding benches.
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mental-health
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Daniel Keyes |
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c4bd373
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People think it's funny when a dumb person can't do things the same way they can.
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Daniel Keyes |
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cefc6aa
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I started out the evening with every intention of being pleasant and making friends. But these days I have trouble getting through to people. I don't know if it's me or them, but any attempt at conversation usually fades away in a minute or two, and the barriers go up. Is it because they are afraid of me? Or is it that deep down they don't care and I feel the same about them?
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Daniel Keyes |
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d850a7e
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I've learned that intelligence alone doesn't mean a damned thing. Here in your university, intelligence, education, knowledge, have all become great idols. But I know now there's one thing you've all overlooked: intelligence and education that hasn't been tempered by human affection isn't worth a damn.
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Daniel Keyes |
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73c293c
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The most important thing had always been what other people thought-appearances before herself or her family. And righteous about it. Time and again Matt had insisted that what others thought about you wasn't the only thing in life. But it did no good. Norma had to dress well; the house had to have fine furniture; Charlie had to be kept inside so that other people wouldn't know anything was wrong.
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charlie
flowers-for-algernon
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Daniel Keyes |
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5c9e0ad
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I don't pretend to understand the mystery of love, but this time it was more than sex, more than using a woman's body. It was being lifted off the earth, outside fear and torment, being part of something greater than myself. I was lifted out of the dark cell of my own mind, to become part of someone else -- just as I had experienced it that day on the couch in therapy. It was the first step outward to the universe -- beyond the universe -- ..
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Daniel Keyes |
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abd86ee
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If I didn't understand what was happening at the time, he says, then it doesn't matter. I'm no more to blame than the knife is to blame in a stabbing, or the car in a collision. "But I'm not an inanimate object," I argued. "I'm a ." He looked confused for a moment and then laughed. "Of course, Charlie. But I wasn't referring to now. I meant before the operation." Smug, pompous--I felt like hitting him too. "I was a person before the opera..
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Daniel Keyes |
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d273f9a
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Results are often negative. We learn what something is not--and that is as important as a positive discovery to the man who is going to pick up from there. At least he knows what not to do.
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Daniel Keyes |
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39333e7
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Whatever happens to me, I will have lived a thousand normal lives by what I might add to others not yet born. That's enough.
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Daniel Keyes |
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1b8e99e
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Strauss again brought up my need to speak and wrtie simply and directly so that people will understand me. He reminds me that language is sometimes a barrier instead of a pathway. Ironic to find myself on the other side of the intellectual fence.
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flowers-for-algernon
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Daniel Keyes |
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a7a8ff2
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When you mature intellectually we may not be able to communicate. When you mature emotionally you may not even want me.
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Daniel Keyes |
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876cbe8
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The depressing thing is that so many of the ideas on which our psychologists base their beliefs about human intelligence, memory, and learning are all wishful thinking.
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Daniel Keyes |
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e17568b
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They would always find excuses to slip away, afraid to reveal the narrowness of their knowledge.
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Daniel Keyes |
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abca5c4
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Even a feeble-minded man wants to be like other men. A child may not know how to feed itself, or what to eat, yet it knows hunger.
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philosophy
science-fiction
psychology
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Daniel Keyes |
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e9142e6
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Am I a genius? I don't think so. Not yet anyway. As Burt would put it, mocking the euphemisms of educational jargon, I'm exceptional-a democratic term used to avoid the damning labels of gifted and deprived (which used to mean bright and retarded) and as soon as exceptional begins to mean anything to anyone they'll change it. The idea seems to be: use an expression only as long as it doesn't mean anything to anybody. Exceptional refers to b..
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flowers-for-algernon
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Daniel Keyes |
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b1516a0
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Strange about learning; the farther I go the more I see that I never knew even existed.
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Daniel Keyes |